Sunday, July 15, 1945. Lifting the blackout.

The U.S. surface naval raid on the Japanese home islands continued with the bombardment of Muroran, a steel making location.  Air Force and Navy air raids also continued.

Australian troops captured Mount Batochampar on Borneo.

Blackout restrictions on London's West End were lifted.

Belgium's King Leopold III again refused to abdicate.

Last edition:

Saturday, July 14, 1945. Verboten und Nicht Verboten

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Dwight Eisenhower, Evolutionary Biology, Germany, Hitler Youth, It was because of World War Two, Italy, Japan, League of German Girls, Nazi Germany, Post WWII Occupation of Germany, Women, World War Two

Thursday, July 12, 1945. Delivering plutonium.

Sgt. Herbert Lehr delivering the plutonium core for Fat Man in its shock-mounted case to the McDonald Ranch assembly room at approximately 6 P.M., July 12, 1945.  Lehr was discharged on February 6, 1946, but returned to Los Alamos to prepare for the Operation Crossroads tests at Bikini Atoll   He went on to work as an administrative officer for the Physics Department at Brookhaven National Laboratory under Samuel Goudsmit, and later worked for Boeing as an engineering supervisor for thirty years before retiring in 1987.  He passed away on  January 13, 2018 at the age of 95 in Seattle, Washington.

Australians landed near Andus on Borneo and took Maradi.

The US dropped napalm on targets on Luzon.

British Field Marshal Montgomery awarded Soviet Marshal Zhukov with the Grand Cross of the Order of Bath, Marshal Rokossovsky with the KCB and Generals Sokolovsky and Malinin with the KBE. 

The British King's Company of the Grenadier Guards formed the guard of honor and tanks of the King's 8th Royal Irish Hussars were drawn up on either side.

Concentration camp survivors carried a large cross through Paris in memory of the French victims of the Nazis.

Last edition:

Wednesday, July 11, 1945. Redeploying.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Germany (Berlin), Imperial Japanese Navy, Okinawa, Operation Downfall, Post WWII Occupation of Germany, U.S. Air Force, United Kingdom, United States, USSR, World War Two, Yugoslavia

Sunday, July 8, 1945. The Camp Salina Massacre.

Private Clarence V. Bertucci murdered nine German POWs at the POW camp at Salina, Utah.  He fired a Browning M1917 into their lodgings, only stopping when he ran out of ammunition.

Nineteen were wounded.

Bertucci, who had a previous court martial from his time in the UK, did not deny the killing and was court martialed and found insane.  The New Orleans native died in New Orleans in 1969 at age 48.

Australian troops landed at Penajam, Borneo.

From Sarah Sundin's blog:

Today in World War II History—July 8, 1940 & 1945: 80 Years Ago—July 8, 1945: Only international sub-to-sub rescue in history: USS Cod rescues crew of stranded Dutch submarine O-19 in the South China Sea.

The USS Saipan was launched.

She's serve until 1970.

Last edition:

Saturday, July 7, 1945. Japanese killings.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Aircraft, Burma, Catholic, Christianity, Jazz, Kalagong Massacre, Music, New Guinea, Red Cross, religion, War Crimes, Women, World War Two

Thursday, July 5, 1945. Elections in the UK.

The United Kingdom held a general election.

The Polish Provisional Government of National Unity was recognized by Britain and the United States..

Australian Prime Minister John Curtin died and Frank Forde took his place.

Gen. Spaatz was announced as the air commander for Operation Downfall.

"Patrols of 29 Bn., 18th Brigade move cautiously into the village area of Penadjam, Balikpapen, Borneo, under sniper fire. 5 July, 1945. Photographer: Lt. Novak. Photo Source: U.S. National Archives. Digitized by Signal Corps Archive.

Last edition:

Wednesday, July 4, 1945. MacArthur declares things wrapped up while additional mopping up occurs in the Philippines.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Adolf Hitler, British Army, Canadian Army, Douglas MacArthur, Germany (Berlin), Harry S. Truman, Independence Day, Philippines, Post WWII Occupation of Germany, World War Two

Monday, July 2, 1945. Advances on Balikpapen.

Maria Michi in Rome, Open City.  She also played the role of the welcoming Italian turned prostitute in Paisan.  Both films were directed by Roberto Rossellini and filmed immediately after World War Two.  Why am I featuring her? See below.

Tokyo's population was down to 200,000 people due to evacuations from the bombed city.

Australian troops took Balikpapan's oil facilities.

American operations conclude on the Ryukyus.

The submarine USS Barb fired rockets on Kaihyo Island near Sakhalin,the first instance of a submarine firing such weapons.

Mountbatten is ordered to launch Operation Zipper, the liberation of Malaya, in August.

The 1945 Sheikh Bashir Rebellion broke out in Burao and Erigavo in British Somaliland against the British.

"The American Farmer" was the cover story in Newsweek.

Louis Till, father of Emmett Till who is remembered for being lynched at age 14 in 1955, was executed by the U.S. Army at Aversa, Italy for two counts of rape and murder.  

The elder Till had married the younger Till's mother when they were 18, over the objections of her parents. The marriage was not a happy one and she divorced him after he physically attacked her.  A conviction from that resulted in his joining the U.S. Army in order to avoid a prison sentence.

While Tills' conviction and execution are debated, the circumstances of the crime, which involved a home invasion and rape, are vile, and it seems that the trial was well conducted.

What's this have to do with the younger Till's lynching?  Absolutely nothing.  The junior Till never knew his father as the relationship had disintegrated when he was a mere infant.

There may be something, however, to take away about the horrors of the postwar world.  Armies are made up of all kinds of people, particularly conscripted armies.  Putting somebody in uniform so they wouldn't go to jail was fairly common.  There was a guy in boot camp with me who was there for that very reason, and I know a very successful person who essentially had the same thing occur to him.

And wars are a huge violation of the moral order.  Invading armies have always been associated with crime, with rape being a particularly common one.  Occupying armies, and even garrison armies, have a fair amount of moral depredation they bring on as well.

This certainly doesn't apply to everyone in uniform in these conditions, and not even the majority of those in uniform, in most modern armies, but it's frankly the case that World War Two created a vast amount of prostitution in Europe, some of it of a massively desperate type as portrayed in Rossellini's Paisan, and discussed in Atkinson's The Day of Battle.  Italy was quite frankly particularly hard hit as its infrastructure was far less developed than that of France or Germany, and it's population lived much more primitively and much closer to the poverty line.  Indeed, the vast bulk of the Italian population even before the war lived in what Americans of the same period would have regarded as poverty.

In these conditions, Italian women became targets.  Many prostituted themselves.  Some entered what might be regarded as a species of concubinage.  A biography of Bill Mauldin notes, for example, that for a period of time both Mauldin and another Stars and Stripes reporter kept girls in their mid teens, something that would have been regarded as a crime in the U.S. given the girls' very young age.  Paisan, as noted, depicts a middle class Italian girl descending into poverty, and then trying to grasp a straw out of it that nearly appears.  The classic The Man In The Grey Flannel Suit depicts a middle class American businessman who was an officer during the war engaging in a secret affair that produces a child while a soldier in Italy.

Concubinage is one thing.  Rape quite another, but murder is beyond the pale even for most whose morals decay in wartime.  But not for everyone.  And of course, we haven't touched on the Red Army, for whom wholescale rape, and then murder, of the women of the countries they overran was routine.  The percentage of Soviet soldiers that went home as rapist likely isn't known, but it was appreciable, and appreciated apparently by Soviet women, which lead to that generations domestic lives being notoriously turbulent.

War changes everything, and most of what it changes, isn't for the better.

Last edition:

Sunday, July 1, 1945. Battle of Balikpapan. The Post War German Map. Blondie.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Australian Army, Automobiles, Battle of Balikpapan, Borneo, Dutch Army, Germany, Growing up in the 1970s, Music, New Wave Music, Personalities, Post WWII Occupation of Germany, Rock Music, World War Two

Sunday, July 1, 1945. Battle of Balikpapan. The Post War German Map. Blondie.

Today in World War II History—July 1, 1940 & 1945: 85 Years Ago—July 1, 1940: Germans occupy Jersey and Guernsey in the British Channel Islands. 80 Years Ago—July 1, 1945: Australians land at Balikpapan, Borneo.

US occupation forces arrive in Berlin.

Col. Benjamin O. Davis Jr. (former commander of the Tuskegee Airmen) assumes command of Godman Field, KY, the first Black officer to command a major US air base.

US resumes production of cars, with the first rolling off the assembly line on August 30.

From Sarah Sundin's blog. 

The Australian and Dutch (mostly Australian) landing at Balikpapan was a major one, which had been preceded by an Allied naval bombardment that lasted for days.

US landing craft landing Australian infantry, July 1, 1945.

The Inner German Border was established and the British withdrew from Magdeburg which was part of the Soviet zone.

German Gen. Willibald Borowietz, 51, committed suicide at the Camp Clinton, Mississippi POW camp.  He had been a POW since 1943, having surrendered with the Afrika Korps.  His wife, Eva Ledien, was of Jewish decent and had killed herself in 1938 so that their children could be Aryanized. Her sister, Käthe (Ledien) Bosse, was killed in Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1944.

Debbie Harry (Angela Trimble), lead singer of Blondie, was born in Miami, Florida.  She was given up for adoption by her parents and adopted by parents of the lsat name of Harry, who renamed her.  Her birth mother, whom she later located, was a pianist, but who chose not to reunite with her.

When I was in high school I was a big fan of Blondie.  I have all of their lps.

Harry started off as a folk singer.  She became a New Wave trend setter with Blondie at age 33, late for a pop musician.  

Last edition:

Saturday, June 30, 1945. Mopping up.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Armor, Army, China, Chinese Army, French Foreign Legion, French Indochina, Harry S. Truman, Imperial Japanese Army, Okinawa, Philippines, United States Marine Corps, World War Two

Monday, June 24, 1945. Brandenburg Ballerina.

Junior Sergeant Lydia Spivak (Лидия Спивак), Red Army Traffic Regulator, June 1945.  She became locally famous in this role and was tagged the Brandenburg Ballerina or The Mistress of Brandenburg Gate.  She would have been 19 or 20 years old at the time and had been in the Red Army since she was 17.  She was a Ukrainian, and served in a transportation unit.  Like most Red Army soldiers, not that much is known about her in the West and indeed she's often confused with another female Soviet soldier who served in the same role.  Having said that, this role did make her into a type of celebrity and she did resurface from time to time, including once in the 1950s when she toured the area in which this video was shot.*  She passed away at age 59.  This is a truncated interview, and there is more to it.  It was impromptu, which is impressive.

US forces took Tuguegarao and Gattaran on Luzon.

Australian forces completed the occupation of the Miro oilfield on Borneo.

The Simla Conference to discuss the future Indian government of India began in Simla, India.

Seán T. O'Kelly became 2nd President of Ireland and Einar Gerhardsen became Prime Minister of Norway.

Footnotes:

*Ms. Spivak by that time was aging rapidly. By the 50s she'd gained a lot of weight and by the time of her sad early death she had aged rapidly  by western standards and looked much older than her 59 years.  She was undeniably cute and lively in 1945, and in later photographs the liveliness seems undiminished in spite of her aging.  She achieved her original goal of becoming a teacher, and in fact became a university professor and married another professor

Spivak is often confused with Maria Limanskaya (Мария Лиманскаяwho) served in the same role in Berlin.  She was a Russian and lived to age 100, dying last year, although oddly enough in some ways had a harder post war life, marrying than divorcing her first husband, and raising two children for a time on her own.

Last edition:

Sunday, June 24, 1945. A parade in Moscow.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, USSR, World War Two

Thursday, June 21, 1945. Fall of Hill 89.

Today in World War II History—June 21, 1940 & 1945: 80 Years Ago—June 21, 1945: US Rangers link with Filipino guerrillas in Aparri, Luzon. US Tenth Army takes Hill 89, the last Japanese stronghold on Okinawa.

Sarah Sundin's blog. 

The USS Barry was sunk off of Okinawa by kamikazes.

The Battle of Tarakan ended in an Allied victory on Borneo.

Twelve Polish Home Army officers were convicted of "underground activities" by the USSR.

Last edition:

Wednesday, June 20, 1945. Japanese surrenders.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Army, Australian Army, Borneo, Okinawa, Polish Government in Exile, Prisoners of War, United Nations, United States Marine Corps, World War Two

Wednesday, June 20, 1945. Japanese surrenders.

Today in World War II History—June 20, 1940 & 1945: Australians take oil fields at Seria on Borneo.

Hard fighting continues on Okinawa, but 1,000 Japanese troops surrendered.

"A Jap prisoner of war and Pfc. John H, Davis, Rt. #1, Whitwell, Tenn, 7th Reconnaissance, 7th Infantry Division, attempt to reach shore on a surf board to coax Japs still entrenched in a cave to surrender and swim to LCI. The attempt was unsuccessful due to the inability of the prisoner of war to swim. 20 June, 1945."

Australians landed at Lutong in eastern Sarawak, Borneo.

The Australian 26th Infantry Brigade captured Hill 90 on Tarakan Island, ending organized Japanese resistance.

The Polish government in exile denies the right of the Soviets to try Polish ministers who had flown to Moscow and were arrested.

The United Nations agreed to let the General Assembly have the right to discuss "any matters within the scope of the charter".

Last edition:

Tuesday, June 19, 1945. Eisenhower's parade.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, British Commonwealth, Collaborators, Dwight Eisenhower, Francisco Franco, Imperial Japanese Army, Luzon, New York, Okinawa, Philippines, Spain, Thailand, United Nations, Weapons, World War Two

Wednesday, June 13, 1945. Taking the Oruku Peninsula.

The Australian 9th Infantry Division captured Brunei.

Okinawa, June 13, 1945.

Japanese resistance on Okinawa's Oruku peninsula came to an end.  Marines took 169 Japanese POWs and found 200 dead, a surprising figure given Japanese unwillingness to surrender.

Admiral Minoru Ōta, age 54, killed himself on Okinawa.

U.S. Army ordnance experts claimed that German plans to attack the United States with rockets, Projekt Amerika, might have been realized by November 1945.

The German design, a development of the V-2 but significantly different, actually would have required a pilot, as existing guidance systems were regarded as inadequate.

Last edition:

Tuesday, June 12, 1945. The suicide of the Japanese Marines.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Army, Blog Mirror, Dwight Eisenhower, Imperial Japanese Marines, Italy, New York, Okinawa, Philippines, Railroads, United States Marine Corps, World War Two

Sunday, June 10, 1945. Action in the Far East.

Today in World War II History—June 10, 1940 & 1945: 80 Years Ago—June 10, 1945: Australian troops land at Brunei on Japanese-occupied Borneo, an important port, and capture Labuan airfield.

Sarah Sundin's blog.  It was, we'd note, a largescale operation.

The also landed at Labuan and Muara.

The Battle of Porten Plantation ended in a Japanese victory.

US and Philippine forces prevailed at Davao.

The USS William D. Porter was sunk off of Okinawa by kamikazes.

"A guncrew of the 383rd Inf. Regt. loads a shell into the new 57mm recoiless rifle to fire against Jap pillboxes and caves on Okinawa. 10 June, 1945. 383rd Infantry Regiment, 96th Infantry Division."  This is the first photograph of a recoiless rifle being used in World War Two that I've seen.  It's sometimes debated if they saw action in the war at all, but clearly they did.

The Chinese Army took Wenchow..

Japanese Prime Minister Suzuki is granted dictatorial powers by the Imperial Diet.

Last edition: 

Saturday, June 9, 1945. Parade.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Army, George S. Patton, Italy, Japan, Luzon, Okinawa, Philippines, United States Marine Corps, Weapons, World War Two, Yugoslavia

Thursday, May 24, 1945. Japanese paratroopers on Okinawa.

The 10th Army crossed the Asato and entered Naha on Okinawa.  The Japanese landed paratroopers on Yontan airfield and destroyed a large number of aircraft.

Australian troops surrounded Wewak on New Guinea.

Tokyo was heavily hit in a US incendiary rai

Field Marshall Robert Ritter von Greim, age 52, the last commander of the Luftwaffe committed suicide.  Von Greim had been a pilot in World War One and was a recipient of the Blue Max.

De Gaulle awarded Montgomery the Grande Croix of the Legion d'Honneur

Courtney Hodges was given a parade in Georgia.

Last edition:

Wednesday, May 23, 1945. The end of governments.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, German Flensburg Government, Heinrich Himmler, Japan, Nazi Germany, U.S. Navy, United Kingdom, United Nations, Winston Churchill